It's Darkest Just Before the Dawn

  Ahhh Varkala, another vacation from our vacation. Nothing like India at all, we could have been in Mexico, except for the festivals. We even had to walk for 15 minutes to find some authentic Indian food. I just love the way they make paratha down south. In Nepal, it was a thick potato filled pancake, but here, it’s more like a flat croissant. And our newest discovery, masala dosa! I can’t believe we hadn’t been gorging on these sooner. Basically a huge crepe, rolled up with curry potato inside. So good! Strange that I’m raving about Indian food now that we’ve been indulging our western tastes. Su has mentioned the amazing Coffee Temple, which has real coffee, and delicious, if expensive, western breakfasts. I would usually go and ‘visit’ Su and Raven for a latte, and then go down the path a little ways for a 100 rupee set breakfast. For less than $2, it would include a Nescafe, fruit salad, thick sliced toast, and a tomato omelette. Then I would spend 1-1 ½ hours bodysurfing, before the first shower of the day. Surfing the patchy WiFi would then be alternated with reading my way through the stash of books I’ve been lugging around. By then, Raven would be back, and we quickly found a favorite lunch spot, the Sky Lounge. It would usually have WiFi, but most importantly, amazing chicken sandwiches. After the return to carnivorous life in Pondicherry, I ended up having a chicken sandwich with fries nearly every day we were in Varkala. After lunch, we would just lay around in the shade, hopefully with the fan on, or at least a decent breeze, because the 35 degree heat was registering as 48 on the humidex.  That’s even too hot to swim. Seriously, I would be overheating while swimming in the ocean. We’d usually wait until around 4:30-5, and then swim until the sun dropped into the waves. Raven is a very strong swimmer, and has really taken to bodysurfing with me. Su doesn’t like the pounding of the surf, but Raven has become adept at ducking under the worst of the surf, and catching waves whenever possible. It can get pretty rough, and anyone who has surfed, or tried, knows what it’s like to be rag-dolled by a huge wave. Even while ducking under some monstrous waves, I have been picked up off the bottom and stuffed into the washing machine a few times, and the course sand is quick to take skin samples from elbows and knees. Raven even did a face-plant, leaving her with some battle wounds on her chin and cheek.

  After the second round of showers, we’d head out for dinner. Unless we were going into the village for Indian, we would walk along the path, admiring the amazing selection of fresh fish on display. There was marlin, mahi-mahi, tuna, snapper, crabs, octopi, massive prawns and many more I didn’t recognize, including two different types of shark. Any kind of western food is available, from chocolate brownies to pizza and pasta. With Su and Raven eating their fill of fruit salads, juice and beans and eggs on toast for free at Coffee Temple, we were still managing to keep to a budget, even with the relatively high tourist prices. Beer and ice cream were occasional treats that we couldn’t resist, especially considering the resort spirit of the place.

  We managed to spend a full two weeks doing a whole lot of nothing. Well, I don’t really consider three hours of swimming a day ‘doing nothing’, but the days certainly started to blur together. The festivities leading up to Holi were a welcome diversion from our laziness. The temple was right across from the best Indian restaurant around, providing a great opportunity to watch fireworks and listen to music over dinner. Some of the fireworks were insane! I actually hid behind the corner of a building as a violent series of explosions erupted very close to me. It started as a roar of small firecrackers, but quickly progressed into detonations that I could feel in my chest, and when they started to become painfully loud and outrageously powerful, I found myself fearing for my safety. I got it all on video, so you don’t need to take my word for it. I can’t wait to play that clip back on the 1000 watt Hi Def system! I also recorded some of the seemingly endless live music blaring out of the speakers at the temple. The final day and night of the Holi festival are full of festivities.  Holi is the ‘Festival of Colour’, the day people throw colored water and powder at each other. It’s fairly subdued in the south, which is alright by me, because it can get really crazy further north, and most tourists end up covered from head to toe with every colour of the rainbow. This seems like a lot of fun, until you start to consider what most of the commercial dye powders are made of, and read about the high rate of eye and skin irritation. There was a ‘club’ that was giving out powder after 9:00, but we didn’t go out again after the parade. We had planned to head back down to the temple to watch the fireworks, but they were so random and sporadic, that we didn’t bother. Considering how small Varkala town is, the parade was pretty elaborate. Su described the parade, and I’ll post some pictures here, too. The fully costumed characters were amazing, especially considering that they were all men. No wonder transvestites are so accepted here. I was definitely disappointed that we missed the elephants. Kerala is known for colorful festivals, some of which involve up to 60 elephants. Timing is everything, especially in India, which brings us to Amma.

  We delayed our trip to the Amritapuri ashram to enjoy Holi, and Amma left on her tour of south India the day before we arrived. Her full name is Mata Amritanandamayi, also  known as ‘The Hugging Mother’. She is one of India’s few female gurus, and often holds ‘darshan’ where she hugs thousands of people in a continuous sitting, going up to 22 hours without a single break. She is said to have turned a bowl of water into milk pudding, after being pressed to prove her powers as a young girl. Of course, the biggest question from her devotees is “Have you met Amma?” I must admit, I am very curious, as she is described as ‘Pure Love’, but the idea of travelling to meet up with her tour, and then standing in line for hours for a hug, still seems like a little too much work. If I need to meet her, I will be presented with the opportunity at some point, of this I’m sure. She travels for up to 8 months of the year, and will be in Seattle in June, but we won’t be home yet. Our plan to stay here really had little to do with seeing Amma , we just wanted to spend some time at an ashram, enjoying another extended stay somewhere that we could do yoga and hopefully meet some kids Raven’s age. It has turned into so much more. Everything here is so accessible; you just show up, sign in, and pay 250 rupees per night, which includes three meals a day and use of all facilities. There is a swimming pool, library, meditation hall, eco center that plays movies, yoga, ocean side guided meditations, etc. There is even a western café that serves up cheap pizza, burgers, toast and eggs, and decent filter coffee, if you want to splurge on food other than the rice and veg curry served up three times a day. They ask that you sign up for Seva, or selfless service, for one or two hours a day, but it’s optional, if you really want to sit around and just read and meditate all day.

  I have really enjoyed the opportunity to work on my karma yoga, and usually have three different Seva placements a day. I’ve started getting up at 6:30, which gives me time for a full yoga session down at the beach before it gets too hot, even though I’m absolutely dripping sweat before I’m half way through. After breakfast, I spend two hours washing dishes, and then I help to move the wet laundry up to the top of the 15 story housing complex, where another group of volunteers hangs it out to dry. Then I spend an hour in the well-stocked library, until lunch is served. After a leisurely meal, and usually an interesting conversation with a devotee or another traveller, I head over to the compost or the recycling department. Compost is one of the most physical ‘jobs’ at the ashram, sorting food and garden waste, shredding branches and palm fronds,  and turning the massive, steaming piles of compost. I was only there for few days before we were all caught up, so I was reassigned to the recycling department. At first, I would just help with the collections, driving around to all the different building to exchange full bins for clean, empty ones: Red for hard plastic, Orange for soft plastic, Blue for paper and cardboard, Beige for sanitary, small silver for sharps, small Brown for hair and dust. The bins would all be sorted and everything would be recycled, composted, or burned in the boiler that powered the kitchen. It was really great to do some physical labour, after six months my body loved the movement. Besides swimming and the occasional long walk, we hadn’t really had much exercise since trekking to ABC!

  After a day or two, I started fixing things around the recycling shop that needed a bit of attention. It started with one of the hand carts that was really hard to steer, and before long I was fixing the roof, repairing concrete, bringing in sand from the beach to level the floor, whatever they could think of. Fixing the roof was a main priority, with the rainy season just around the corner. They were obviously trying to leave as many trees standing as possible, and would construct the buildings around them. However, large, square holes had been cut out of the corrugated metal roof around the trees, and the water would simply pour in through the openings.  With a pair of metal snips, an old yoga mat, and some aluminum that I’d stripped off some old doors, I managed to stop about 95 % of the water. The rest could be collected into a couple of buckets, making for a much more comfortable work space. I was so thankful for the opportunity to be active, use my brain to problem solve, and improve my karma, all at the same time. Being active also helped me acclimatize to the extreme heat. Normally, even while just eating dinner, sweat covers my arms, and droplets roll down my chest and back, but after a couple of hours of being active, I look like I’ve gone swimming in my clothes! I actually rang out my shirt into a cup one afternoon, collecting 100 ml of sweat. I know, pretty gross!

  The ashram is starting to recognize the limits of the aquifer they’ve tapped into, so they ask you to only have one shower a day, and after I’m done Seva, I have mine, and then settle under the fan in our room to read, blog, or sort through the 1000’s of photos we’ve already taken. My ‘Best Of’ file already has over a thousand pictures in it! I hope everyone at home is prepared for multiple dinner/slide show nights at our house, because there is no way to get through the whole trip in one sitting!

  Every evening at 5:30, there is a guided meditation at the beach, where the afternoon breeze has whipped the sea into a froth, and the shadows are long and refreshing. I have been pleasantly surprised at how my meditation has blossomed in the short time we’ve been here. I never could have hoped to find such peace, such depths of stillness and silence, so quickly. It has changed the way I see everything around me, having really connected to the one-ness of all things. There is no question that this is the path to immense joy, and that the fear and doubt that have been nagging me are merely constructs of the ego, attempting to maintain a grasp on the old habits that give it power over me. There is light in all of us, even if we choose not to see it in ourselves, or are blind to the possibility. I now seek only the discipline to maintain a daily meditation practice, and for the patience to allow time for it to develop. The rhythm of the breath is like waves on the shore. Just as a few waves shift the sands and massage the beach, many waves, over many months can shape the beach, wear away the rocks, and even eventually cause sheer cliffs to surrender to the sea, attention to the breath through focused meditation can reshape who we think we are, and even free us from habits and cycles that seemed permanent and overwhelming. I am so thankful for the seemingly overwhelming challenges that have led me to seek out real solutions, not just more distractions. Sitting still, quieting the mind, and freeing the luminous Self that just IS, that is the most genuine, most challenging, most human pursuit we can aspire to, and I am so thankful for the time spent at Amritapuri, where I finally connected with that Self. Om Shanti, Shanti, Shanti. (Love, Love, Love)